Kanai
Mieko 金井美恵子 (1947–)： Kanai
Mieko read widely in fiction and poetry from an early age. In 1967, at the
young age of twenty, she was runner-up for the Dazai Osamu Prize for Ai no seikatsu (A Life of Love), and the
following year she received the Gendaishi Techo Prize for poetry. While
maintaining a certain distance from literary circles and journalism, she has
built up a world of fiction known for its sensual style. Along with her
fiction, her criticism, which showcases her often scathing insights, has a
devoted following. (Source: J-Lit Books from Japan)

Study Questions

1.
Describe the frame-story structure. Who are the two narrators? What is their
relation to one another? Where does the frame story start and end? What is the
source of the “vague odor” that follows Narrator 1 wherever she goes?

2.
How does the work draw from Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871)? What elements/themes from those
works does Kanai borrow? In what ways does she alter those elements/themes?

4.
Describe the rabbit-girl’s father and his “unusual tastes” (shikō)?

5.
Describe the father and the rabbit-girl’s biweekly ritual. What do the other
members of his family think of their strange ritual?

6.
What is the nature of the father and the rabbit-girl’s relationship? Is their
relationship incestuous? If so, what evidence can you find to support this?

7.
What happened to the mother and brother? Why did they disappear? How do the rabbit-girl
and her father react to their disappearance? Do they secretly know why they
left?

8.
Describe the father and daughter’s life together after the mother and brother
disappear. What new role does the daughter take on? What pleasures does she
begin to derive from murdering, skinning, and preparing the rabbits?

9.
Discuss the rabbit-girl’s transformation (from someone who enjoys killing/skinning/cooking
rabbits to someone who wishes to become a rabbit). Why the “quest for
rabbithood”?

10.
Describe the father’s transformation/deterioration.

11.
Describe the daughter’s surprise birthday party for her father. What “gift” did
she plan to “give him”? What ends up happening? What injury does the daughter sustain?

12.
Describe the father’s death face and its effect on the daughter.

13.
Describe the daughter’s life after her father’s death. Why does she gouge out
the eyes of all the rabbits?

14.
What condition is the rabbit-girl in when Narrator 1 meets her “a second time
long afterward.” Why has she gouged out her remaining eye?

15. What
does the rabbit-girl’s blindness render her capable of seeing? Discuss the significance
of these three sentences:

When your eyesight gets weaker,
invisible things begins to be visible. The power that makes invisible the
things which you could see and that makes visible invisible things develops
naturally. I can always see the face of my father in death.

16.
Discuss the final scene (in which Narrator 1 crawls into the rabbit-girl’s
outfit). What does this suggest about the connection between Narrator 1 and
Narrator 2?

I peeled off the white rabbit’s fur
which had completely enveloped her body. Then I threw off what I had been
wearing and got into her costume. I put on the hood and mask which were by her
side, held my breath in the animal odor, and waited for a long time crouching
there without moving. A group of blind rabbits gathered about us. She and I,
along with the rabbits, made no effort to stir and so we remained in that same
spot, absolutely still.

Further
Discussion Questions

1.
Discuss the violent/sadomasochistic/sexual/incestuous elements in the work.

2.
Did the narrator really “come to,” as she says on page 3? Or was the whole
thing a dream after blacking out? (Relate your answer to Todorov’s conception
of “the fantastic.”)

3.
Did the rabbit-girl really exist (in the world of the story)? Or is she the
creation of Narrator 1’s imagination?

*Further
Reading: For an insightful essay in English on the story, see Mary Knighton’s
“Down the Rabbit Hole: In Pursuit of Shōjo
Alices, from Lewis Carroll to Kanai Mieko”: http://bit.ly/1lSWKlI

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is a collaborative web journal founded and edited by Beholdmyswarthyface and Sally Suzuki. It focuses primarily—but not solely—on modern Japanese culture, history, and literature. Of miscegenated and common birth, Beholdmyswarthyface grew up in Phoenix, AZ. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Tokyo, and currently teaches literature as tenured lecturer at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies 名古屋外国語大学.